A leap forward in the field of robotics Until now, most of the advances in robotics have taken place instructured environments. Scientists and engineers have designedhighly sophisticated robots, but most are still only able tooperate and move in predetermined, planned environments designedspecifically for the robots and typically at very high cost. Thisnew book takes robotics to the next level by setting forth thetheory and techniques needed to achieve robotic motion inunstructured environments. The ability to move and operate in anarbitrary, unplanned environment will lead to automating a widerange of new robotic tasks, such as patient care, toxic sitecleanup, and planetary exploration. The approach that opens the door for robots to handle unstructuredtasks is known as Sensing-Intelligence-Motion (SIM), which drawsfrom research in topology, computational complexity, controltheory, and sensing hardware. Using SIM as an underlyingfoundation, the author's carefully structured presentation isdesigned to: * Formulate the challenges of sensor-based motion planning and thenbuild a theoretical foundation for sensor-based motion planningstrategies * Investigate promising algorithmic strategies for mobile robotsand robot arm manipulators, in both cases addressing motionplanning for the whole robot body * Compare robot performance to human performance in sensor-basedmotion planning to gain better insight into the challenges of SIMand help build synergistic human-robot teams for tele-operationtasks. It is both exciting and encouraging to discover that robotperformance decisively exceeds human performance in certain tasksrequiring spatial reasoning, even when compared to trainedoperators * Review sensing hardware that is necessary to realize the SIMparadigm Some 200 illustrations, graphic sketches, and photos are includedto clarify key issues, develop and validate motion planningapproaches, and demonstrate full systems in operation. As the first book fully devoted to robot motion planning inunstructured environments, Sensing, Intelligence, Motion is amust-read for engineers, scientists, and researchers involved inrobotics. It will help them migrate robots from highly specializedapplications in factories to widespread use in society whereautonomous robot motion is needed.

Sensor fundamentals -- Application considerations -- Measurement issues and criteria -- Sensor signal conditioning -- Acceleration, shock and vibration sensors -- Biosensors -- Chemical sensors -- Capacitive and inductive displacement sensors -- Electromagnetism in sensing -- Flow and level sensors -- Force, load and weight sensors -- Humidity sensors -- Machinery vibration monitoring sensors -- Optical and radiation sensors -- Position and motion sensors -- Pressure sensors -- Sensors for mechanical shock -- Test and measurement microphones -- Strain gages -- Temperature sensors -- Nanotechnology-enabled sensors -- Wireless sensor networks: principles and applications.

This text presents the proceedings of a conference on intelligent autonomous systems. Papers contribute solutions to the task of designing autonomous systems that are capable of operating independently of a human in partially structured and unstructured environments. For specific application, these systems should also learn from their actions in order to improve and optimize planning and execution of new tasks.

Computer scientists have long appreciated that the relationship between algorithms and architecture is crucial. Broadly speaking the more specialized the architecture is to a particular algorithm then the more efficient will be the computation. The penalty is that the architecture will become useless for computing anything other than that algorithm. This message holds for the algorithms used in real-time automatic control as much as any other field. These Proceedings will provide researchers in this field with a useful up-to-date reference source of recent developments.

This book enables design engineers to be more effective in designing discrete and integrated circuits by helping them understand the role of analog devices in their circuit design. Analog elements are at the heart of many important functions in both discrete and integrated circuits, but from a design perspective the analog components are often the most difficult to understand. Examples include operational amplifiers, D/A and A/D converters and active filters. Effective circuit design requires a strong understanding of the operation of these analog devices and how they affect circuit design. - Comprehensive coverage of analog circuit components for the practicing engineerMarket-validated design information for all major types of linear circuitsIncludes practical advice on how to read op amp data sheets and how to choose off-the-shelf op ampsFull chapter covering printed circuit board design issues

This book is concerned with Intelligent Control methods and applications. The field of intelligent control has been expanded very much during the recent years and a solid body of theoretical and practical results are now available. These results have been obtained through the synergetic fusion of concepts and techniques from a variety of fields such as automatic control, systems science, computer science, neurophysiology and operational research. Intelligent control systems have to perform anthropomorphic tasks fully autonomously or interactively with the human under known or unknown and uncertain environmental conditions. Therefore the basic components of any intelligent control system include cognition, perception, learning, sensing, planning, numeric and symbolic processing, fault detection/repair, reaction, and control action. These components must be linked in a systematic, synergetic and efficient way. Predecessors of intelligent control are adaptive control, self-organizing control, and learning control which are well documented in the literature. Typical application examples of intelligent controls are intelligent robotic systems, intelligent manufacturing systems, intelligent medical systems, and intelligent space teleoperators. Intelligent controllers must employ both quantitative and qualitative information and must be able to cope with severe temporal and spatial variations, in addition to the fundamental task of achieving the desired transient and steady-state performance. Of course the level of intelligence required in each particular application is a matter of discussion between the designers and users. The current literature on intelligent control is increasing, but the information is still available in a sparse and disorganized way.

One of the ultimate goals in Robotics is to create autonomous robots. Such robots will accept high-level descriptions of tasks and will execute them without further human intervention. The input descriptions will specify what the user wants done rather than how to do it. The robots will be any kind of versatile mechanical device equipped with actuators and sensors under the control of a computing system. Making progress toward autonomous robots is of major practical inter est in a wide variety of application domains including manufacturing, construction, waste management, space exploration, undersea work, as sistance for the disabled, and medical surgery. It is also of great technical interest, especially for Computer Science, because it raises challenging and rich computational issues from which new concepts of broad useful ness are likely to emerge. Developing the technologies necessary for autonomous robots is a formidable undertaking with deep interweaved ramifications in auto mated reasoning, perception and control. It raises many important prob lems. One of them - motion planning - is the central theme of this book. It can be loosely stated as follows: How can a robot decide what motions to perform in order to achieve goal arrangements of physical objects? This capability is eminently necessary since, by definition, a robot accomplishes tasks by moving in the real world. The minimum one would expect from an autonomous robot is the ability to plan its x Preface own motions.